Let me start, in the spirit of the Unreliable Narrator, by stating that this is all my own fault.

Okay, the abbreviated version: The way back machine is set to somewhere around October of last year. Through Gaskells and a Halloween party I get to meet a new friend through our mutual friend Frederick. Danielle has a lot of the features I admire in women, independence, a sweet personality, and a glowing smile. Do I talk to her? Yes. Do I go further than that? Nope. I figure, for various reasons, my life is a little too complicated at the time, and figure I'll see her at the next Gaskells Ball that December and I'll talk to her more then. December comes and goes: No Danielle. No biggie. A month or so later Frederick mentions that she's in a play in Concord, and we both decide to go. Along the way we count the number of women we've both been attracted to at one time or another in our 6 year acquaintence. Though the number is reasonable it's the correlation that's remarkable.

So the show was great. Afterwards Fred and I join Danielle and the cast for post-show munchies and we talk a little more. At the time I was about to go down to Austin for SXSW so we talk about getting together for something fun once I'm back. Of course, by the time I get back I'm swamped with finishing out the semester while being a TA and deciding what to do about grad school vs the rest of my life. I think that it's probably not the best time to pursue anything that would take the back seat from the outset, so I hold off.

Come May I graduate. Now I'm a little more free time-wise, but I'm going on a trip in a couple months with my family and a good friend who happens to be an ex-girlfriend.1 So I figure that it's probably not too bright of an idea to ask someone out on a date just weeks before you're going to be spending substantial time with an ex-girlfriend on a cruise with your family. That sort of thing can put a dampner on any heretofore blossoming whatever. So I wait. Meanwhile, at the June Gaskells Ball, Danielle's not there. A fairly regular bunch (about 30 people) go to Au Coquolait afterwards, around 12:30 in the morning, to grab some food and wind down. Guess who comes over and says hi right as everyone's leaving, as she just happened to be there anyhow? Bingo.

So now we're really close to the trip, and I figure I'll email her, debating whether it's worse to email her and suggest we do something once I get back from this trip, or if I should, after waiting 6 months, wait another few weeks. Well, I was actually going to write her today from work, only her email address wasn't in my palmpilot, instead sitting securely in Outlook Express on my powerbook at home (come to think of it, in an archive of outlook express, as my computer took a nosedive since then) but I digress. So I don't end up emailing her today, and when Emily, Ammy, Rick, and I go to see Fred in a production of Midsummernight's Dream, who should be there? Bingo. And she brought a date.

Okay, here's where I start a new paragraph, implying that the fact that she brought a date is some big plot twist; the sort of thing that, if it happened on primetime TV would be followed by a fade to black and a commercial for Snuggles Fabric softener (okay, daytime TV. Primetime would probably be for a Chevy Truck...). The fact is though, that it's really only a small plot twist. As I'm sitting next to Emily before the lihgts go down I think about how the 'Facts of Life' thing to do would be to pretend we're going out, but then I think why? Then I think that what would actually be the Shakespearian thing to do, then I get sidetracked.

So introductions were made (he was introduced as 'friend,' by the way) and I'm still stuck for a course of action. Writing now would seem like a pretty 'cause and effect' reaction (again, a Shakespearian response, only this time in more of a Jack Ritter vein), and the idea of waiting until after the cruise makes a minime pop onto my shoulder with a cricket bat and bop me upside the head, while asking what this object lesson has taught me.

The other thing is that this isn't a big-time crush or anything. I don't go to sleep thinking about her and waking simply happy that she actually exists outside of sleep, even if we don't really know each other. Instead, she's the quintisential opportunity, the person who, if I don't talk to her, effectively proves that I wouldn't talk to most anyone who didn't push themselves at me. That's a difficult thing to get over.

So option three of course is pining idlly to the void. I haven't really gone on this sort of thread here before, and I'm sure I've bored some, made others bump fury.com up from 'read once a week' to 'twice a week', and possibly made some of my friends uncomfortable. As long as I've been keeping a weblog, that is still a question I don't know the answer to.

Anyhow, it's pretty late and I should definitely get some sleep. I'm crashing at Ammy and Rick's tonight, so I can get to Yahoo! bright and early in the morning. The other story I'd like to tell is how Ammy came inches from instant, real, harsh and graphic death tonight, but the pictures are still in my digital camera until I make it home to my download cable, so it'll just have to wait (no the pictures aren't of the event, just the circumstances). To ease the little suspense I've built up, Ammy is fine, with just a medium-badly bruised and scraped knee, and a set of keys that was run over by at least two cars in the 30 seconds it took to retreive them.

Signing off for now. Have a great night/day and cherish the life you have right now, no matter what shape it's in or what form it takes.

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Footnotes:

1. I have this tendancy (ability, gift, blessing) to remain friends with people I've dated. With one notable (but nevertheless unnoted as of yet) exception, I'm still friends with each girlfriend I've had, and am very good friends with a handful (over years, mind you. I'm not the player that makes me sound like).